Deriv appoints Rotimi Akinyele as Chief Technology Officer to lead its AI-native engineering strategy
Dubai, 22nd October 2026 – Deriv, a global leader in online trading, has appointed Rotimi Akinyele as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He joined the company in July 2024 as Vice President of Security and has since taken on a widening remit across the business.
As CTO, Rotimi will lead Deriv’s engineering organisation. His priorities include automating work across every function, improving Deriv’s internal AI intelligence layer, and building a self-improving agentic loop for software development. Controls and security remain central to that work as AI agents are given greater access and responsibility.
From Security to CTO: a track record of delivery
Since joining Deriv, Rotimi has led Security and Data, then automation across Compliance, Data and Finance, and more recently Trading and Antifraud. Throughout, he has kept security and access controls at the centre of how Deriv deploys AI.
Before Deriv, he was Director in the Group Information Security Department at Dubai Holding, overseeing cybersecurity across its hospitality, real estate, Information and Communications Technology (ICT), media and education portfolios. He was previously Head of Information Security and Business Continuity at a government authority in Ras Al Khaimah, UAE.
Rakshit Choudhary, Chief Executive Officer of Deriv, commented: “Rotimi has grown as a leader throughout the period he has been with us. I’m confident in him as CTO, and I look forward to working closely with him to build an AI-native Deriv. As we automate more and give agents greater access and responsibility, we have more systems and operations to secure. Our controls need to be the foundation of how we build.”
Rotimi Akinyele added: “I am honoured to take on this role at a pivotal point for Deriv. Our engineering teams have spent the past year changing how we build, and my focus is to keep that pace while making sure security and controls grow with every system we automate. I look forward to working with our engineers to make that happen.”
The appointment reflects Deriv’s approach of developing leaders from within as it builds an AI-native company. Deriv has set a target of automating 75% of manual workflows by the end of 2026.
